Second Best
by x-kate17-x
Summary: Tony hasn't been second best for a long time... Tate, Kibbs.


Hi everyone. I am working on the next chapter of WAHP, but I was trying to write it this morning and ended up with this instead. It's kind of different (actually, a lot different) from what and how I normally write, so please let me know what you think :)

xxx

* * *

Tony's going to die tomorrow.

It's Sunday morning and Kate's next to him, with her hair mussed and knotted and her eyes shut. Her lips are parted slightly, her chest is rising up and down as she breathes, and her bare legs are draped around one of Tony's calves, looping them together as they sleep.

Except Tony's awake now, and his brain is functioning on oxygen again instead of tequila-fuled lust, and he's painfully aware that he's a dead man.

Kate's hair smells like oranges and her skin smells like sweat, but not in a bad way. She was wearing a silk dress last night, which pooled onto the floor at her feet in the most beautiful way and would have made Tony ask her to put it back on, just so he could see it slide down her calves like a waterfall again, had he not lifted his eyes from the dress to ask the question and become more transfixed with Kate herself. The dress is still on the floor where it was abandoned last night, and if Kate wasn't curled around his leg as she is, Tony thinks he might have to get up and retrieve it so he can hold it and smell it and keep it as a memento. If he keeps that dress with him at all times, when it comes time for his death he'll at least die happy.

Then again, if he keeps the dress, Kate will have nothing to wear, and will be forced to stay naked in his bed until such a time as he deigns to supply her with clothing. Tony can't see too many problems with that scenario, but it's not conducive to him dying a blissful death. Not unless Gibbs is struck by some pang of kindness that allows Tony to choose his own place of death before he kills him.

And Tony has no doubt that Gibbs will, indeed, kill him.

Technically he and Kate are both adults, and therefore are free by law to get up to whatever sordid antics they wish in their own time. And technically, the rules at NCIS do not forbid inter-personnel relationships. Technically, neither Kate nor Tony can truthfully claim to be in any kind of relationship that would render the other one unavailable according to the rules of the dating world.

But there is another set of rules, unspoken and unwritten, that every male at NCIS knows and follows religiously.

And the number one rule, the highest of the high, the most earth-shatteringly unbreakable rule of all, is that Kate is Gibbs'.

Gibbs hasn't ever directly said so, but every potential suitor that has trailed hopefully around Kate's desk and caught Gibbs' eye is perfectly aware of the fact that Gibbs has the prior claim. And, until such a day as when (if) he makes this information official and Kate turns him down, nobody else has permission to even contemplate the possibility.

Tony did a lot more than contemplate, last night.

Kate is oblivious. Tony's sure she must be, otherwise she would have put Gibbs out of his misery a long time ago. If Kate possessed any inkling of the feelings her boss harbours for her, Tony has no doubt that it would not be his bed she chose to occupy last night.

Tony hasn't been second best for a long time, not since he was a little boy in his step-mother's house and her 'real children' got preferential treatment.

It doesn't hurt as much as he remembers. But it does hurt.

Kate shifts, her back arching slightly in her sleep and her legs tightening around Tony's before she relaxes again and rolls slightly to the side, causing the sheet to slide off her body. He should move, cover her over again. She'll be cold, she's not wearing any clothes...

On second thoughts, she's not wearing any clothes. And it's not really _that_ cold...

Tony is so going to die tomorrow. And then he's going straight to hell.

Maybe Gibbs won't find out. Maybe his spidy-senses will be having an off day, and when Kate appears and Gibbs smells Man (which he will, because he does, every time Kate comes into work from an apartment that isn't hers) he won't recognise it as Tony and will instead spend the day plotting against this nameless, faceless enemy who has dared to take what he has no right to.

Perhaps Gibbs will be forgiving, even. He might think that Tony is the lesser of several evils, as far as one-night-stands go, and let the incident slide. Or he might finally realise that if he's going to lay a claim to Kate, he has to get on and do it, because Kate is gorgeous and Kate is funny and Kate is sweet, and an entire male population is not going to hang around for all eternity, patiently waiting for Gibbs to get his act together and tell her he thinks so. _Kate_ is not going to hang around for all eternity and wait for Gibbs to tell her he thinks so.

Or maybe Gibbs will have gotten over his thing for Kate, by tomorrow. Maybe Gibbs is sitting at home right now, turning over a new leaf and deciding that he doesn't, in fact, want Kate. He wants the woman on security at the gate, or he wants that blonde agent who sits by the elevator, or even that he wants Abby. Or perhaps life in a government agency isn't for him anymore, and he wants to retire to St. Matthews and become a Monk.

And perhaps flying pigs will declare world peace and Tony'll be out of a job.

Kate moves again, her eyelids fluttering and her legs shifting as she wakes, and she murmurs softly.

Tony grins at her, and she smiles back before snuggling closer to him with a sparkle in her eye. She wriggles as close to Tony as is physically possible, clasping his hand in hers and leaning her head up to kiss him.

She still tastes a little bit like tequila, and the combination of stale alcohol and morning breath should make locking lips with Kate very unappealing, but somehow it doesn't. The threat of Gibbs' wrath and the inevitable consequences should make rolling over so he has Kate pinned to the mattress a somewhat bittersweet experience, but it doesn't. And knowing that tomorrow, Kate will sit at her desk and pine for Gibbs while Gibbs watches her out of the corner of his eye should make Tony think twice about what he's doing. But it doesn't.

Tony is a dead man.

But he does have Kate – for today, at least. It could be worse.

Yes, Tony thinks, as Kate's dark eyes meet his and she grins with giddy eagerness and licks the remains of Tony's kiss from her lips. It could be a lot worse.


End file.
